Q: Dropping Wi FI Signal

Since this post.....

+Re: Dropping Wi FI Signal+
+Posted: Jan 12, 2010 1:08 PM in response to: Ryan83 +
+ Click to reply to this topic Reply email Email+
+As i posted prior, my SMC reset didn't last very long and i was back to dropped wi-fi connections to my router.+
+So i decided to the only other thing i have not tried, which is reset the router, and setup the access point on my router all over from scratch.+
+About two days now and no dropped connections.+
+very strange.+

and doing the steps mentioned prior in my Jan posting, my wi-fi has not dropped the signal.

May not work for most people, but then again, this problem seems to have a far range of solutions.

Message was edited by: James Parks

ghbias wrote:
After much experimentation, in my case I've determined that the primary problem is temperature. I have installed coolbook and smcFanControl. By dropping the voltage to the cpu to .9 volts and keeping the fan speed at a minimum of 5000 rpm, the temperature of the airport card stays lower and the connection seems to be maintained. There may be some form of temperature protection built into the airport card, and when it turns the card off because of temperature the software is unaware and behaves erratically. Thus the symptom of showing full bars but not being connected (hardware monitor is a good tool to see all the temperature sensors in the computer).

But I've also had DHCP issues with the Actiontec modem/router. I have since connected my netgear router up to use for wireless. It has behaved much better in the past. I'm not very impressed with the actiontec. It is fairly limited in configuration items. That's probably why Qwest issues it as their standard dsl modem.

I suggest that those having problems with the airport disconnecting while showing full bars, then not being able to turn it on and off again (without restarting) check their operating temperatures using a tool such as hardware monitor.

Now I just need to find a way to run my mbp at full speed without cooking the airport card (and myself at times).

William Riggins wrote:
FWIW, I took my MBP 2,2 into the Genius Bar last week. Battery was shot, and I'm still having this wireless issue after a complete reinstall. I'm going to try resetting the PRAM and SMC, but honestly, I'm about ready to ditch the thing. I have a Linksys router, not a Dlink or 2wire as many of the posters are indicating. I got it when Vista started blowing up when using my old Linksys. It isn't signal quality, since I have a full signal when it happens, and it really looks like my DNS stops working.

After talking to the engineer from Comm Escalation, we confirmed that it wasn't my signal quality or anything. The guy at the Genius Bar deleted some preference files and said that's all he could do until I confirmed it wasn't software.

I can't keep justifying all the time/money spent trying break/fixes anymore. I'll take it in one more time, but this is getting out of hand. From what I'm hearing, even new hardware is having this issue.

Hardware monitor is available from http://www.bresink.com/products.html, (which costs a small amount) and there is a free application Temperature Monitor from the same site.

Are you saying your solution is only due to temperature control or both temperature and DHCP solutions?

And what temperatures did you see that cause problems? When I run the Temperature Monitor I don't see a temperature for the Airport Card, is this available in Hardware Monitor but not Temperature Monitor? Or is this a limitation of my Mac (no temperature sensor on the airport card?).

ctmurray wrote:

ghbias wrote:
After much experimentation, in my case I've determined that the primary problem is temperature. I have installed coolbook and smcFanControl. By dropping the voltage to the cpu to .9 volts and keeping the fan speed at a minimum of 5000 rpm, the temperature of the airport card stays lower and the connection seems to be maintained. There may be some form of temperature protection built into the airport card, and when it turns the card off because of temperature the software is unaware and behaves erratically. Thus the symptom of showing full bars but not being connected (hardware monitor is a good tool to see all the temperature sensors in the computer).

But I've also had DHCP issues with the Actiontec modem/router. I have since connected my netgear router up to use for wireless. It has behaved much better in the past. I'm not very impressed with the actiontec. It is fairly limited in configuration items. That's probably why Qwest issues it as their standard dsl modem.

I suggest that those having problems with the airport disconnecting while showing full bars, then not being able to turn it on and off again (without restarting) check their operating temperatures using a tool such as hardware monitor.

Now I just need to find a way to run my mbp at full speed without cooking the airport card (and myself at times).

William Riggins wrote:
FWIW, I took my MBP 2,2 into the Genius Bar last week. Battery was shot, and I'm still having this wireless issue after a complete reinstall. I'm going to try resetting the PRAM and SMC, but honestly, I'm about ready to ditch the thing. I have a Linksys router, not a Dlink or 2wire as many of the posters are indicating. I got it when Vista started blowing up when using my old Linksys. It isn't signal quality, since I have a full signal when it happens, and it really looks like my DNS stops working.

After talking to the engineer from Comm Escalation, we confirmed that it wasn't my signal quality or anything. The guy at the Genius Bar deleted some preference files and said that's all he could do until I confirmed it wasn't software.

I can't keep justifying all the time/money spent trying break/fixes anymore. I'll take it in one more time, but this is getting out of hand. From what I'm hearing, even new hardware is having this issue.

Hardware monitor is available from http://www.bresink.com/products.html, (which costs a small amount) and there is a free application Temperature Monitor from the same site.

Are you saying your solution is only due to temperature control or both temperature and DHCP solutions?

And what temperatures did you see that cause problems? When I run the Temperature Monitor I don't see a temperature for the Airport Card, is this available in Hardware Monitor but not Temperature Monitor? Or is this a limitation of my Mac (no temperature sensor on the airport card?).

1st issue was temperature. This results in the airport card shutting down. The only way I've found to restart it is to restart the computer. As far as seeing the airport card temperature, I can't tell you about whether your computer has the sensors, but I can tell you that hardware monitor looks at a lot of temperatures (10?) down to individual cells in the battery. I do have some problems keeping the temperature of the airport card low enough (somewhere below 47 to 50C).



But I also found that there were problems besides that with the Actiontec router when the computer was cold. These seemed to fit a number of the DHCP problems previously identified. I found that setting the IP address manually resolved much of those problems. But things work better with the Netgear router and using DHCP (plus it works in N, and is much faster).



By the way, most of these utilities can be found at VersionTracker.com. I've found that site fairly useful over the years to find specialized applications.

I'll keep working to identify the max temperature for the airport card, and report back. It would be good if Apple could respond and confirm if heat is truly a significant issue.

Message was edited by: ghbias

The issue I am having with an early MacBook is "loosing" signal strength at various times of the day. So the number of bars goes down, and connection is very slow, even if I am in the room with the router. The signal to noise ratio gets bad . This is different to some issues under discussion on this thread (good airport bars but still not a good internet connection).

But then I have seen early in the day I can get several hours before symptoms set in. I assumed this was a faulty Airport card or disconnected/damaged antenna. Maybe it was a temperature issue for my machine. I solved by purchasing an external, USB connected and powered wireless device and turned off the internal Airport.

55 pages of posts-
what happened to 'it just works'?

~It just doesn't.

Don'be be silly. 55 pages about what -- 10 Macs? Out of how many millions sold?

Really? That must mean I own 20% of the Macs with this issue.

That's pretty unlucky then. If I return these two brand new 17" MBPs and get another two, will that fix the 20% of Macs with these issues? What do you reckon?

Thank goodness all MBP owners with this issue have posted in this thread, otherwise this would be a statistical trap for those who like to make such sweeping statements.

James

If temperature is the issue, the problem won't be present at start-up -- it will kick in only after the card heats up. And in the MBP, perhaps, no problem when running off the battery. (Seems there are quite a few unrelated issues, all manifesting with the same symptom.)

We welcome your statistics, if you have them.

jpdemers wrote:
Don'be be silly. 55 pages about what -- 10 Macs? Out of how many millions sold?

It is a good question as to how prevalent this problem might be. I am thinking people are so use to poor internet response in the US that it really takes horrendous service or clearly a sudden change in performance before they go online looking for help. I have found several threads here on the Apple Discussion board related to this really long one. Most people will start a new thread instead of searching too hard for a previous thread (even if it contains a solution). So many of the people in this thread had just upgraded the OS and saw an immediate change/ problem. Or they had multiple machines, like a new Snow Leopard machine showed up with poor performance while adjacent machines were okay. There was someone with poor performance on Snow Leopard but fine performance when booting the same machine in Windows. So these contrasts in performance seems to have brought them here. But I suspect many others are not getting to this thread or are just "living with it".

I attended a Mac SIG meeting the other day and brought up issues with Comcast as an ISP, and poor wireless performance Once the conversation started nearly everyone had their own Comcast story and how they solved slow or intermittent internet connection. But if I had not brought this up specifically at the end they would have just continued to suffer in silence.

What following this thread has shown me is there is a gap in our understanding of how wireless works, and what kinds of quirks might be lurking. Recently William K discussed some DHCP flags being set/unset that can cause issues (and a related solution from california99 and his Dlink router). Finally a strange suggestion from an Apple engineer (giving no reason why to make a change) matched up with someone who really understands networking. But what tools do we have to solve these issues on our own?

I downloaded Wireshark a power user packet capturing program (free but runs under X11 on the Mac). I captured some packets and am trying to figure out what this all means. There is a bit of training on the web site, but frankly they assume you know what these packets mean and what is normal behavior and what is abnormal already. I did find a cookie from zazzle.com was setting a cookie or something that was resulting in many bad TCP protocol errors. I can't go any deeper with my limited understanding, but I did go to my browser and block zazzle.com from giving me cookies.

My issue has been very slow loading web pages. Typical scenario for me; turn on Firfox and my home page (google/ig custom home page) loads instantly. Even if I do a google search I get a very quick first page of results. But if I click on any one of those searches (even an apple.com/support link) I get a very slow loading web page to the point of a time out (but an immediate reload results in very fast loading).

Or I get web pages where the CSS has not be interpreted - so I see text with no formatting or images. Again a reload solves the problem quickly. Even a web site like apple.com can have this issue, and I am assuming apple has the servers such that I should not be seeing a significant delay from them. Is this normal these days? Or is this Comcast? Or my wifi? Or the router set up?

But I want a tool that also looks at my latency, and how well my DNS services are being provided. Today I set my router and computer to use Google DNS because I saw some DNS calls in the Wireshark log as still using Comcast even though I had set my computer to use Google (the router was still looking at Comcast).

I need a network/ISP analysis for dummies web site that teaches me how to use free or low cost tools to look at my wifi system and in normal english gives me hints what to do to improve. And prevent me from doing something stupid (which is why I have only slowly considered changes in my wifi based upon suggestions on this thread).

Dear jpdemers,

Whilst I appreciate that you're well meaning, it's actually well informed opinions I'm after.
If you don't suffer from this issue yourself, and cannot offer a solution or any new advice, then could it be that there may be other threads on these forums that could be served better from your Mac experiences and knowledge?

James

Nutty87th wrote:
Dear jpdemers,

Whilst I appreciate that you're well meaning, it's actually well informed opinions I'm after.
If you don't suffer from this issue yourself, and cannot offer a solution or any new advice, then could it be that there may be other threads on these forums that could be served better from your Mac experiences and knowledge?

James

I have ready every thread in this long list and made a document with my culling of solutions and advice. Once in awhile I post this long document to help the combined group, and I can do so again. But technically I did not have this exact problem (but the thread contains more than one exact issue as well) - I have just become engrossed. My previous post was a call to the group to see if anyone has the software/skills to train us how to troubleshoot wifi issues in general. I am investigating some of these wifi analysis software options, again hoping to become better and more helpful.

california99 wrote:
Some weeks ago, an Apple engineer -- after a lot of detective work involving obtaining a DLink 615 wireless router exactly like mine and configuring it the same -- found what he thought was the cause of my wireless connection problem. After making the change he suggested, I have been using the system for several weeks with absolutely no problems. The problem he found was a default network setting in the router. The simple fix is:

On your wireless router, go to:
Network Settings -> Always Broadcast ( compatibility for some DHCP clients)
Uncheck this option.
Save Settings.

I do not know if Apple's procedures will mean that this diagnosis will be posted internally so it eventually gets to all their support personnel. It is possible that a similar fix will work with other routers.

california99 can you give us more information on how to change this setting on the Dlink router? I downloaded a random Dlink router manual and could not find in detail where this setting is made (I searched the document). Possibly you could post your Dlink model number? I am trying to see if my Netgear router has a similar option, but the companies probably use different terminology, so I am hoping to find the Dlink manual and see what other settings are near by - so I can find them on my router.

From William K's comments this seems to be a DHCP setting . So when you say Network Settings this is not enough detail for me to find. You are not talking about SSID broadcast are you? Any other details you can provide would be appreciated.

Log in to the router's homepage (192.168.0.1 is the factory default). You get a choice of options, among them Wireless Settings and Network Settings. (I forget the others. There are not many, maybe only one more.) Select Wireless Settings. Scroll down the various settings until you can find the one I referred to in my last posting, then proceed as outlined. It's generally safest to make any change when hardwired to the router, but in this case I made the change wirelessly. William Kucharski posted an explanation of what problem this change circumvents.

Whoops. I meant select Network Settings. Sorry. Just got back from a trip and am a bit jetlagged.